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Insects Rapidly Becoming Resistant To GM Corn

Posted by samzenpus on from the the-speed-of-nature dept.

DrHeasley writes "BT corn, which contains the DNA for Bacillus thuringensis toxin, was once hailed as the final solution for insect predators on this valuable crop. Now it turns out that insects, and evolution, are smarter than we thought, and the corn that contains the built in pesticide is no longer reliably protected."

9 of 368 comments (clear)

  1. Jeff Goldblum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Life finds a way

    1. Re:Jeff Goldblum by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The only real surprise is how fast the insects coevolved

      Not really. It's kind of like cracking copy protection on the internet. It only takes one. One successful cracker. Or in this case one successful mutation. Having exclusive access to entire crops that other insects can't touch offers a clear survival advantage, so once the mutation happens it's a given that there will be a population explosion of resistant types, within a single or at best a couple generations. Plagues of insects are not unheard of, because insects have phenomenal breeding capability. Well this is a man-made plague of resistant types.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    2. Re:Jeff Goldblum by The+Master+Control+P · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's no disease pressure to speak of on Western populations, yet the developed West is characterized by zero to slightly negative population growth.

      If you want to get Africa's population growth in check, eliminate disease and eliminate famine. One you take away the visible and very real threat of most of a mother's children not living to reproductive age, she'll stop having half a dozen of them.

    3. Re:Jeff Goldblum by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They even sue farmers that DONT use GM crops that try and keep seeds. anyone with a seed cleaner is sued out of existence, and farmers that plant non GM crops typically get sued because the wind blew and the GM crops a 1/4 mile away pollinated a portion of his crops.

      Monsanto needs to be put out of business, they are the most evil company ever existed next to banks and Dick Cheney.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    4. Re:Jeff Goldblum by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Imagine that. We tamper with nature, and nature tampers right back. And, we're kinda stuck with a monoculture. I've read, and even posted on /. a time or two, about the many varieties of vegetables that are virtually extinct now. Potatoes. I think we have maybe 5 varieties, out of hundreds that were common in the 1800's. Just one super resistant blight that targets one currently grown variety can put mankind in real hardship. The strain of corn being cited probably accounts for more than 60% of the corn grown in the US, and possibly 40% or more of the corn grown worldwide. Kill it, and people are going to go very hungry.

      Monocultures are so WONDERFUL - for the people who are extorting money out of that one culture!

      Laugh at me, one and all. But it is within reason that these monocultures may put mankind's survival at stake one day.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  2. Surprise? by cbope · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is this a surprise, that nature can route around humans? Seriously, this was expected. However, all this means is that Monsato and other evil corporations like it who create GM seeds now have an opening for a new product to develop and sell, for an even higher price. And they will get this higher price because the "old" GM seeds are not successful any more. And the cycle continues...

  3. Why is this even a surprise? by idbeholda · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Everytime we've hailed a one-shot approach to these types of problems, the same thing happens. Look at antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria and the like. Do you really think this is going to be any different?

    1. Re:Why is this even a surprise? by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We didn't expect it to happen so quickly, that's all. Bacteria evolve much more rapidly than insects: E. coli splits once every 8 hours under optimal conditions in colonies of millions of cells, and may mutate up to 0.003% of their genome with each cell division under stress. That's a lot of brute forcing power. Insects, by contrast, have much more elaborate and stringent eukaryotic mutation controls, and most species take a couple of weeks to hatch.

      --
      Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
  4. Thanks, Monsanto! by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Organic gardeners saw this coming from the get-go - I remember a Mike McGrath (then editor in chief of Organic Gardening) editorial predicting it. Heck, we'd already seen this happen with badly managed organic farms - back in the 1990s, resistance had been seen in Diamondback moths on Hawaiian farms that sprayed B.t kurstaki repeatedly rather than just when monitoring indicated a need for spraying.

    The continued usefulness of organic/botanical pesticides has, in large part, been due to their lack of persistence in the environment. Inserting those genes into plants is basically making the pesticides persistent, which (obviously) leads to much quicker development of resistance on the part of the pests.

    The part of me that's a cynic wonders if this is what Monsanto had in mind all along... one less organic competitor to their stable of proprietary chemicals.

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